UK General Discussion: Rishecession

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Given Kruger's own background, it's a bit ridiculous to see him railing against a 'globalized elite'.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

Johnson: typically Boris claimed to be a fan of all the London clubs.

OK so things might be a bit different in the UK where it feels like half of all teams are London based, but if someone says they are a Yankees and Mets, Dodgers and Angels, Cubs and Whitesox, etc. fan, I guarantee you they are just the worst person.

Though at least he's consistent about that, you can find photo ops of him for basically every london team there is. Even Millwall lol.

[Zinneke]

Johnson: typically Boris claimed to be a fan of all the London clubs.

OK so things might be a bit different in the UK where it feels like half of all teams are London based, but if someone says they are a Yankees and Mets, Dodgers and Angels, Cubs and Whitesox, etc. fan, I guarantee you they are just the worst person.

Though at least he's consistent about that, you can find photo ops of him for basically every london team there is. Even Millwall lol.

Millwall would have been Johnson's core vote in south London.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Just for anyone wondering the allegiances of the other recent prime ministers:

Wilson: Huddersfield Town (his hometown club)

Callaghan: not a big football fan, but his native club Portsmouth once asked him for digout when they were on hard times

Thatcher: her dislike of football and it's fans is well known but she was rather incredibly made Honorary Vice President of Blackburn Rovers by owner Jack Walker in the 90s.

Major: huge Chelsea fan, frequently seen at Stamford Bridge

Blair: famously a Newcastle fan, it was once claimed a young Tony sat in the Gallowgate end and saw Jackie Milburn play, something that was impossible as the Gallowgate didn't have seats until many years after Wor Jackie left. Campbell later admitted he made it up

Brown: a Raith Rovers fan, he handed programmes at Starks Park as a child.

Cameron: infamously said he was a West Ham fan when he previously had claimed to be a Villa fan. His support for the other team in claret and blue comes from his uncle Sir William Dudgale being the chairman in their early 80s glory days.

May: Not a big football fan but reportedly has a soft spot for AFC Wimbledon (and the original club) due to her time as a councillor in Merton.

Johnson: typically Boris claimed to be a fan of all the London clubs.

Truss: a Norwich fan - although a Leeds native, she supports the team of her constituency.

Brown, in the manner of most people like him, was a fanatic fan and aced a quiz on raith rovers when he appeared on Soccer AM- his close aide Damian Mcbride recalled a press story about him being seen around the club on transfer deadline day.

Would pay good money to see him run a club.

As I recall, McBride's version is that when he asked Brown about it, the latter looked shifty and demanded to know if they had pictures.

This is McBride's account:

What spare time Gordon had up in Scotland he poured into not just supporting Raith Rovers, but pulling strings behind the scenes at the club, sometimes becoming a bit too involved. I rang him in October 2006 and said I'd had a call from a Scottish journalist who'd heard a bizarre rumour that Gordon was seen in a pub car park in Kirkcaldy after midnight apparently negotiating contract terms with Trinidad international Marvin Andrews. Gordon was silent, then said: Have they got photos?

I'm always conflicted about this. On the one hand, I really want to believe it was true; on the other hand if McBride tells you that water is wet you should seek a second opinion.

[CumbrianLefty]

Given Kruger's own background, it's a bit ridiculous to see him railing against a 'globalized elite'.

His family background too, come to that - given his Handmaid's Tale type effusions yesterday.

[Torrain]

https://twitter.com/leighsus/status/1658506245798522880

[Filuwaúrdjan]

[Cassius]

This is North East heritage?

[CumbrianLefty]

https://twitter.com/leighsus/status/1658506245798522880

Investigate the investigators!

Always such a reliable sign that there is nothing to hide.

[TheTide]

Harry and Meghan have been involved in a car crash..



...not serious it seems, or involving any major collisions. Occurred after an awards ceremony last night. Imagine the conspiracy theories if it had been a fatal one.

[GoTfan]

Harry and Meghan have been involved in a car crash..



...not serious it seems, or involving any major collisions. Imagine the conspiracy theories if it had been a fatal one.

Keep quiet, or the snipers will get you.

[MABA 2020]

Another sign of a country in decline, can't even assassinate our royals properly anymore

[WD]

https://twitter.com/willglloyd/status/1658586033003347969?s=46

[Torrain]

https://twitter.com/willglloyd/status/1658586033003347969?s=46

There's more discussion over here in the UK by-elections thread, over on the International Elections board, if you're interested:
https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=435421.msg9074904#msg9074904

[NewYorkExpress]

The House Public Accounts Committee has put out a report stating that the Parliament Building is "leaking, dropping masonry and at constant risk of fire", as well as pocked with asbestos.

Britain’s Parliament building is an architectural masterpiece, a UNESCO World Heritage Site visited by 1 million people a year. It’s also a crumbling, leaky, asbestos-riddled building at “real and rising” risk of destruction, lawmakers said Wednesday.

In a hair-raising report, the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee said the seat of British democracy is “leaking, dropping masonry and at constant risk of fire,” as well as pocked with asbestos.

“There is a real and rising risk that a catastrophic event will destroy” the building before long-delayed restoration work is done, the committee said.

In the most urgent in a series of warnings stretching back years, the committee said renewal work had been painfully slow and mostly amounted to “patching up” the 19th-century building, at a cost of about $2.5 million a week.

The committee slammed “years of procrastination” over the future of the parliamentary complex, known as the Palace of Westminster.

In 2018, after years of dithering, lawmakers voted to move out by the mid-2020s to allow several years of major repairs. The decision has been questioned ever since by lawmakers who don’t want to leave; last year, the body set up to oversee the Parliament project was scrapped.

Meanwhile, the building grows more decrepit. The roof leaks, century-old steam pipes burst, and chunks of masonry occasionally come crashing down. Mechanical and electrical systems were last updated in the 1940s.

There is so much asbestos that removing it “could require an estimated 300 people working for two and a half years while the site was not being used,” the House of Commons committee said.

And there is a constant threat of fire. The committee said there have been 44 “fire incidents” in Parliament since 2016, and wardens now patrol around the clock.

[JimJamUK]

The Tees Valley mayor was just on Newsnight. Not an entirely convincing performance, and not helped by Victoria Derbyshire being the interviewer.

[Blair]

There was much discussion yesterday about planning reform and house building.

What is interesting is that much like with benefits a lot of people in this country don’t actually understand the changes over the past decade- you see a lot of comments saying ‘why don’t we take over empty shops’ (you already can!) and why don’t you use brownfield sites (we do and it’s expensive)

I think housing is one issue where there’s a big gap between elite opinion (which broadly favours building more in different forms ofc) and the average swing voter- I think there’s a danger assuming that every voter is a YIMBY.

[afleitch]

A little point on polling.

Some companies poll weekly, others monthly, some stop and start.

That can affect trend lines. Taking the average of each firms polls since January there are 15 outfits who polled.

Labour's average lead across all firms is as follows

Jan: 20
Feb: 22
Mar: 19
April: 16
May: 16 (so far).

If we take out 5 irregular firms; some who haven't polled since March or just started we get;

Jan: 20
Feb: 20
Mar: 18
April: 16
May: 17 (so far).

If we leave the 7 firms who also polled before the last GE we get;

Jan: 19
Feb: 19
Mar: 17
April: 16
May: 17 (so far)

That excludes established firms like Ipsos who have been quiet and ICM who haven't polled at all.

So the more consistent the polling and the pollster, that 6 point drop since February is reduced to only 2.

[CumbrianLefty]

There was much discussion yesterday about planning reform and house building.

What is interesting is that much like with benefits a lot of people in this country don’t actually understand the changes over the past decade- you see a lot of comments saying ‘why don’t we take over empty shops’ (you already can!) and why don’t you use brownfield sites (we do and it’s expensive)

I think housing is one issue where there’s a big gap between elite opinion (which broadly favours building more in different forms ofc) and the average swing voter- I think there’s a danger assuming that every voter is a YIMBY.

I doubt if anybody is assuming the last point tbh.

Firstly, people mostly imagine the "green belt" to be a bucolic paradise of meadows and wild animals - a lot of it isn't like that at all. Secondly, of course Labour isn't going to concrete over huge swathes of the British countryside and it shouldn't be that difficult to get this across. Thirdly, polling that shows opposition to building on the green belt *also* shows big support for more house building overall - it is a good thing that one of our main parties is now at least attempting to square this circle. Not just that, but opposition is mostly concentrated in areas unfavourable to Labour both geographically (lots of LibDem/Tory battegrounds) and demographically (home owning boomers who mostly vote Tory anyway)

And a risk averse politician like SKS wouldn't be doing this if they hadn't run through the above first?

[Conservatopia]

I agree with the above, but I must say big respect to Starmer if he pushes this potentially toxic policy through when in office. Housing, or the lack of it, is about the biggest issue this country faces long term. We need to make up for the lost time over the last 15 years.

[Blair]

There was much discussion yesterday about planning reform and house building.

What is interesting is that much like with benefits a lot of people in this country don’t actually understand the changes over the past decade- you see a lot of comments saying ‘why don’t we take over empty shops’ (you already can!) and why don’t you use brownfield sites (we do and it’s expensive)

I think housing is one issue where there’s a big gap between elite opinion (which broadly favours building more in different forms ofc) and the average swing voter- I think there’s a danger assuming that every voter is a YIMBY.

I doubt if anybody is assuming the last point tbh.

Firstly, people mostly imagine the "green belt" to be a bucolic paradise of meadows and wild animals - a lot of it isn't like that at all. Secondly, of course Labour isn't going to concrete over huge swathes of the British countryside and it shouldn't be that difficult to get this across. Thirdly, polling that shows opposition to building on the green belt *also* shows big support for more house building overall - it is a good thing that one of our main parties is now at least attempting to square this circle. Not just that, but opposition is mostly concentrated in areas unfavourable to Labour both geographically (lots of LibDem/Tory battegrounds) and demographically (home owning boomers who mostly vote Tory anyway)

And a risk averse politician like SKS wouldn't be doing this if they hadn't run through the above first?

That's very true; there has been today and will just need to be some rather subtle reminders of the above.

The other thing as well, perhaps where I disagree from the more YIMBY types, is I think you need to make a big song & dance about infrastructure too- and of course reform the private rented (and leasehold) sector to a much greater extend. This is where you will hit the forces of conservatism...

[CumbrianLefty]

He is far from guaranteed to get the job, though.

[Torrain]

Aye - apparently the Canadians are gunning for their Deputy PM (who Washington are quite partial to, and who is, for bonus points, the granddaughter of Ukrainian migrants), and there’s also some talk about the Estonian PM being in the running.

But it sounds like the French and Germans are less likely to push a serious candidate of their own this time around (something to do with internal frustration at their attempt to play nice with Putin in the run-up to the invasion). So competition will be a little less fierce than it normally would be.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Must be a little boring for the Opposition Front Bench to have to repeat 'it's one rule for them...' so often.

[Torrain]

Sunak himself, of course, was very kind to give them a high-profile quote to use against him in his very first remarks as PM:

This government will have integrity, professionalism, and accountability at every level. Trust is earned and I will earn yours.

Edit (Sunday morning): Sunak was asked a question about the Braverman news at the G7, and got quite testy and defensive.